Jimmie Carroll Smith, also known as ‘Possum’ and ‘Big Jim’, passed away peacefully in his own bed on Saturday, July 13, 2024, after several years of declining heart health. His heart can be forgiven for being worn out, for it was the engine that powered a very great man for over 80 years, and gave him the opportunity to live a joyful, loving, and indeed a very BIG life.

Born at the end of the “Silent Generation,” he was the third son of Theodore Smith and Lucille Lyte Smith, born when Lucy was forty years old. As a young mother in Oklahoma during the Great Depression, Lucy had lost her son Perry Joe to scarlet fever, and her son Bill was suffering from schizophrenia and the effects of its treatment. When she learned she was pregnant again, Lucy checked into a Dallas hospital so she could lose weight and safely deliver her last child. By the time she was nine months pregnant, she had lost fifty pounds and little Jimmie Carroll was born. He became the light of her life, even more so after his beloved father Theo died in 1957. Big Jim got his humor and joy from his father, and from his mother he inherited his loving heart and, above all, his size.

With his parents both working as teachers in rural Oklahoma, little Jimmie had few options other than to tag along to school during the day. When he was four, they realized he had done all the work to finish first grade, and he was promoted to second. This early start in education meant he was in high school at 11 and college at 15—always the biggest kid in the class. Because he was so young and tall, and without a father, he said he often felt awkward and lost at school—but he always relied on his oldest friend, George Morrow, for much-needed support.

Eventually, Lil’ Jimmie began to grow into his enormous size and become Big Jim when he entered Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, OK in 1960. He served as vice president of the student body and proudly booked the first performance of the band The Five Americans. He was a participant in the event known as the Great Wapanucka Trainwreck, but his most important job in that infamous tall tale was to keep the story told, embellished, and eventually preserved in the StoryCorps archives at the Library of Congress. He graduated in 1964 and followed his friend Don “The Bear” Boyce to Hobbs, NM, to teach history. Teaching high school students in rural New Mexico meant that some of his students were actually older than he was. He eventually returned to the Dallas area, taught for another five years, and met and partied with some of his most cherished friends – Bub Turner, Mike Overton, Rosemarie Allen, Lauren Turner, Lary Walker, Stacy Lackey, and many, many others.

After years of making ends meet by teaching, he turned to selling instead, becoming a self-proclaimed “man of the cloth.” Big Jim spent most of his professional career in the wholesale fabric business at Haber Fabrics and Textile Creations. By his own account, he conquered the double-knit market in the 1970s and built a successful business. He channeled his creativity into developing quilt lines such as the “Piney Woods Prints,” a visual tribute to the Spoon River Anthology set in East Texas, and the “Mason-Dixon Line,” which reprinted popular Civil War-era fabric patterns. But his greatest professional triumph came after he saw his daughter and her dance team shivering in the stands at a late-season football game. What followed was a long line of polar fleece prints covered in footballs, soccer balls, or hockey sticks, created in collaboration with his beloved friend and designer, Diane George. The day after his death he received his last commission check for the football design, so as he said, he never retired.

On Christmas Day in 1970, he met Kathy Blakeney in Atlanta, GA, another traveling saleswoman who specialized in fabrics. They were married in 1975 and had two weddings with separate anniversaries: she married him on February 22 in Georgia with her family, and he married her on February 23 in Texas, surrounded by his family and their mutual friends, including thirteen groomsmen and thirteen bridesmaids. Big Jim and Kathy were not particularly interested in children and spent much of the 1970s hanging out with their friends in Dallas, traveling to Las Vegas and San Francisco, and partying on Lake Texoma and Lake Grapevine. But a devastating house fire in 1978 threw their priorities into disarray and their daughter, Stacy Carroll, was born just nine months after they moved back into their rebuilt home.

When Big Jim became a father, he did it in a big way, too. When the third graders did exceptionally well on their standardized tests, he showed up at the school cafeteria, made a public announcement about how proud he was, and bought the entire classroom ice cream. When a bunch of girls were complaining about having to practice softball in the Texas heat, he surprised everyone with McDonald’s for the entire team. When he saw that the church Thanksgiving breakfast consisted of muffins and fruit—a meal that was definitely not big enough for Thanksgiving, at least not for him—he decided to make pancakes and bacon for the entire church every Thanksgiving morning for years. When he and Kathy became the “choir parents” for the church youth choir, he made them breakfast, too. When his daughter took her college friends to Dallas, he bought them all dinner, and when she took her sorority sisters to Las Vegas, he got them hotel rooms and gave them $20 to gamble. If the school or church or theater group or football team needed food for their event, he would show up with BBQ for everyone, and if you needed fabric to cover the stage, make costumes, or decorate the festival, you knew who to call. He was one of the few people who could produce enough food to make even teenage boys in Texas cry, “Big Jim, I’m full!”

Big Jim openly embraced the fun of life. A lifelong Oklahoma Sooner, he also had an encyclopedic knowledge of all things sports. A fabric man, he liked to look good and had a fabulous closet full of coats, shoes, jewelry and hats, including, most notably, his chai, a 1970s gold medal with the Jewish symbol for life; he wore it every day and said he never felt dressed without it. He loved the blues and rock ‘n’ roll and taught his daughter to spell “MAN” to the musical accompaniment of Bo Diddley. A direct recipient of the benefits of the New Deal, he loved FDR, LBJ and the Democratic Party – when he wasn’t frustrated that “they never learn the lessons of history.” He loved casinos, cards and could get a craps table going better than anyone. With his ever-changing collection of convertibles from the 1960s and 1970s, he was a self-proclaimed “Cadillac Man.” And long before the term, Big Jim exemplified the importance of “chosen family,” making and maintaining lifelong friendships. He was the first person to get up in the morning to make the blackest, strongest coffee you’d ever drink, and he had the biggest laugh, told the best stories, and always made everyone feel at home — even if you felt awkward or shy, too small or too big.

Big Jim will be especially missed and remembered by his wife, Kathy Blakeney Smith; his daughter, Stacy Smith; his brothers-in-law, Roger Blakeney (Pam Blakeney) and Chris Blakeney; his nephews, Matt Blakeney (Kelli Blakeney) and Mark Blakeney (Nikki Blakeney); his grandchildren, Clayton Stone (Roger Viticoski), Molly Gallagher and Summer Gallagher (Rose Gallagher); his goddaughter, Megan Turner Crowe (Paul Crowe); his nieces and nephews, his “only daughters” and hundreds of friends and colleagues from church, work and all the great things he did in his life.

A Service of Testimony of the Resurrection for Jimmie Carroll Smith will be held on Wednesday, July 24 at 2:00 PM at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Rome, GA, with visitation at 1:00 PM. A memorial service will be held in Dallas, TX, on August 23, 2024, and a party and BBQ on August 24. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to Westminster Presbyterian Church or Fork, Spoon and Plate, a hunger ministry in West Rome.

“There never was a man, living or dead, who had a better life than I have. There have been many who have probably lived just as well, but none, NO ONE, better than mine. And I believe that.”

Henderson & Sons Funeral Home, Oaknoll Chapel, is honored to serve the family of Mr. Jimmie Carroll Smith.